Deuxième séance du séminaire 2021-2022 d'AGORA

“History of Ideas and History of Knowledge” Research Seminar
AGORA research centre, CY Cergy Paris Université
Thursday afternoons 2.30-4 pm
Either online or in the “Salle des Thèses” (Chênes 2, Cergy)

Organisers:
Prof. Emmanuelle de Champs, emmanuelle.de-champs[at]cyu.fr
Prof. Yann Giraud, yann.giraud[at]cyu.fr
Prof. Catherine Marshall, catherine.marshall[at]cyu.fr
Prof. Lissell Quiroz, lissell.quiroz[at]cyu.fr
 

16 December 2021 (online):
Dr. Cléo Chassonnery-Zaïgouche (University of Cambridge, CRASSH)
“Contested Rational Decisions. Economic Expertise in the Comparable Worth Controversy, 1979-1989.”

Summary: 
The “comparable worth” principle – a call for a general readjustment of wages according to a measure of the worth of an occupation – gained a policy momentum in the United States in the early 1980s. A Supreme Court decision, multiple bills, congressional hearings as well as an arsenal of initiatives from women and labor groups all over the US shaped the debate as a technical as well as political issue. At the core of the quarrel lie diverse opinions on the criteria and practices of setting fair wages. Between 1979, the start of a national movement, and 1985, when all US government agencies declared the principle unsound, this paper follows the deployment of economic arguments on both sides of the controversy. The main shifts in the dominant position are the location of biases affecting pay settings and the criteria for rational wage determination: from the market to job analysts for the bias, and from bureaucratic procedures to market for the locus of rationality. I am documenting this shift using the discussions on scientific evidence brought by experts in legal and political hearings. The paper describes three moments in the relations between science and policy: first the scientisation of policy, the politicisation of science and finally, its weaponisation. 
 

Link to join the session:
https://cyu-fr.zoom.us/j/97669769713?pwd=L2J1aHZJVnZKMzlhdkpFaGRtZW5Odz09

Previous session:

Thursday 14 October 2021 (online):
Prof. Chandran Kukathas (Singapore Management University)
Presentation of his book Immigration and Freedom (Princeton University Press, 2021).

Summary of the book:
Immigration is often seen as a danger to western liberal democracies because it threatens to undermine their fundamental values, most notably freedom and national self-determination. In this book, however, Chandran Kukathas argues that the greater threat comes not from immigration but from immigration control. Kukathas shows that immigration control is not merely about preventing outsiders from moving across borders. It is about controlling what outsiders do once in a society: whether they work, reside, study, set up businesses, or share their lives with others. But controlling outsiders—immigrants or would-be immigrants—requires regulating, monitoring, and sanctioning insiders, those citizens and residents who might otherwise hire, trade with, house, teach, or generally associate with outsiders. The more vigorously immigration control is pursued, the more seriously freedom is diminished. The search for control threatens freedom directly and weakens the values upon which it relies, notably equality and the rule of law. Kukathas demonstrates that the imagined gains from efforts to control immigration are illusory, for they do not promote economic prosperity or social solidarity. Nor does immigration control bring self-determination, since the apparatus of control is an international institutional regime that increases the power of states and their agencies at the expense of citizens. That power includes the authority to determine who is and is not an insider: to define identity itself. Looking at past and current practices across the world, Immigration and Freedom presents a critique of immigration control as an institutional reality, as well as an account of what freedom means—and why it matters.

Discussant: Prof. David Owen (University of Southampton).

Link to join the session:
https://teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join/19%3aW5IXlKjoAk2ft1jihTJAB2FEo9k7XNJeKpjdsWAo2X81%40thread.tacv2/1633615267534?context=%7b%22Tid%22%3a%22b8c19512-2aed-471d-a8d1-9b06e7da786a%22%2c%22Oid%22%3a%2280315421-7163-440c-88b4-e8453557f220%22%7d

Next sessions:

20 January 2022 (in Cergy):
Dr. Edmund Neill (New College of the Humanities, London)
“Contested conceptions of citizenship in Britain in the 1990s”.

17 février 2022 (in Cergy, in French):
Prof. Joanna Nowicki (CY Cergy Paris Université, LT2D)
Around the book La vie de l’esprit en Europe centrale et orientale après 1945, dictionnaire encyclopédique (éditions du Cerf, 2021).

17 March 2022 (in Cergy):
Dr. Christophe Salvat (CNRS, Centre Gilles Gaston Granger)
Presentation on ‘Applied Ethics and Artificial Intelligence’ & on L’utilitarisme (La Découverte, 2020)

14 April 2022 (in Cergy):
Dr. Stephen Davies (Institute of Economic Affairs)
On his book The Economics and Politics of Brexit (AIER, 2020)
Discussant: Prof. Aurélien Antoine (Directeur de l’Observatoire du Brexit)

19 May 2022 (in Cergy):
Prof. Teresa Ortiz-Gómez (University of Grenada)
"Genre et savoirs médicaux en Espagne et en Europe" (title to be confirmed)

16 June 2022 (online):
Prof. Paola Bacchetta (University of California, Berkeley)
"Le féminisme queer aux Etats-Unis" (title to be confirmed)